The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  On the walls are woven mats in all the colors of the southwestern rainbow, and charcoal drawings of bulls and canyons. “What do you think of her,” I ask Rebecca, when Hilda is in the makeshift bathroom/kitchen.

  “Honest?” Rebecca says, and I nod. “Well, I can’t believe you’re here. Have you lost your mind? It’s midnight, and some person you’ve never seen in your life comes up to the car, and says, Hey, come to my place, and she’s an Indian to boot, and you just pick up your things and go. Whatever happened to never taking candy from strangers?”

  “Egg creams,” I say. “She hasn’t offered us candy.”

  “Jesus.”

  Hilda comes out with a wicker tray that carries three foamy glasses and ripe plums. She holds one up and tells us they are grown locally by her step-brother. I thank her, sipping at my egg cream. “So tell me how you came to be on Dog Forked Road at midnight.”

  “Is that what we were on?” I turn to Rebecca. “I thought it was Route Eight.”

  “We turned off Route Eight,” Rebecca says. She turns to Hilda. “It’s a long story.”

  “I have all the time in the world. I’m an insomniac. That’s what I was doing on Dog Forked Road at midnight. Milk’s the only thing to soothe my heartburn.”

  I nod sympathetically. “We’ve come from California. I guess you could say we’ve run away from home.” I try to laugh, to make light of the situation, but I can see this woman whom I hardly know staring at the bruises on my wrists.

  “I see,” she says.

  Rebecca asks if there is some place she can lie down, and Hilda excuses herself to fix up a fold-out couch in the other room. She collects pillows from one closet and sheets colored with Peanuts characters from the kitchen pantry. “Get some sleep, Mom,” Rebecca says, sitting beside me on the loveseat. “I worry about you.” Hilda ushers her into the bedroom, and from my angle I can see Rebecca slip in between the sheets, sighing the way you do when you run your ankles along all the cool spots. Hilda stands in the doorway until my daughter falls asleep, and then she steps back and presents me with Rebecca’s face, in profile, lit silver and traced with the grace of the moon.

  10 JOLEY

  Dear Jane—

  Do you remember when I was four and you were eight, when Mama and Daddy took us to the circus? Daddy bought us small flashlights with red tips that we could swing around and around when the clowns came out, and peanuts—so many! the shells we stuffed in our pockets. We saw a lady stick her head inside the jaws of a tiger; and a man dive into a small bucket from a place way up in the air that I thought must be Heaven. We saw brown-skinned midgets flipping over each other, catapulted by ordinary seesaws like the one in our backyard, and Mama said, Now don’t you two do this at home. And Mama held Daddy’s hand when the acrobats did their most difficult trick, swinging on a silver trapeze and locking in midair like mating falcons for just a moment, before they grabbed another trapeze and went separate ways. I missed the trick because I was so busy looking at Mama’s hand; the way her fingers twisted between Daddy’s as if they had a right to be there; her diamond engagement ring holding all the colors I had ever seen.

  Then there was a kind of intermission, do they call it that at a circus? And a man in a green coat began to mill through our seating section, peering into the faces of the children. And suddenly a woman was standing in front of me, calling TOM! TOM! and pointing. She bent down and told Mama I was the most adorable little boy she’d ever seen, ever. And Mama said that’s why she named me Joley, after joli—French for “pretty”—as if Mama fancied herself to be French. And then the man in the green coat came over and squatted down. He said, Boy, would you like to ride on an elephant? Mama said that you were my sister and that one couldn’t go without the other, and they gave you a quick once-over and said, Well, all right, if that’s that, but the boy sits up front. They took us backstage (there’s another word—is there a backstage at the circus?), and we crunched peanut shells with the toes of our shoes until a lady wearing sequins all over her body picked us up one by one and told us to straddle the elephant.

  Sheba (that was the name of the elephant) moved in sections, in quarters. Her right front hunched forward, then her right rear. Left front, left rear. Her skin felt like soft cardboard and the hair sticking through her saddle itched my legs. Then we entered the ring, me sitting in front of you. Flash cubes popped and a thundering announcer, a man I thought was God, told everyone our names and ages. I saw washes of color spinning by in the audience. I tried to find Mama and Daddy. You held me tight around the ribs. You said, I don’t want you to fall off.

  If you are reading this you’ve made it to Gila Bend and I’m sure you’ve gotten yourself a good meal and a decent night’s rest. When you leave the P.O. you’ll see an apothecary on your right. The owner of the store is named Joe. Ask him how to get to Route 17. You’re heading towards the Grand Canyon. It’s something you ought to see. Tell Joe I sent you, and he’ll set you straight.

  It’s an eight-hour drive. Same thing: Find a place to stay and go to the P.O. in the morning—the one closest to the northernmost point of the canyon. There’ll be a letter waiting to take you somewhere else.

  About the circus: They took pictures of us riding that elephant, but you never knew. One where most of your face was hidden became the poster for Ringling Bros, the next year. It came in the mail when you were at school; I had been let out early from kindergarten. Mama showed me and wanted to hang it up on the wall of my bedroom. My pretty boy, she called me. I wouldn’t let her hang it up. I couldn’t stand seeing your hands around my waist but your face lost in the shadows. In the end she threw it out, or she said she did. She sat me down and said that I had been given my looks by God and that I’d have to get used to it. I told her, flat out, that I didn’t understand. They made me ride up front because of how I look, I told her. But don’t they know Jane is the beautiful one?

  Love to you and Rebecca.

  Joley

  11 REBECCA

  July 29, 1990

  A clamshell of color snaps open and shut several inches from my face flashes lights and the sounds of animals that are dying what has happened I ask you what has happened? sometimes it comes to me times like this when the world has turned black and white sometimes it comes and it will not leave it does not leave no matter how many times I scream or I pray.

  I saw people ripped in two flesh split like broken dolls in what used to be an aisle outside the sky had shattered and the world which I had always imagined as soft cotton blue was angry and stained with pain.

  Do you see I had witnessed the end of the world I saw heaven and earth trade places I knew where devils came from I was so young at three and a half with the weight of my life on my brow I knew for sure my head would burst.

  At the end of it all row nine sailed inches away like a glider in the night and over its rotten edge I watched the fireworks diamond glass explosions and in spite of myself I started to cry.

  There is a sound that the mute make when they are murdered I learned this years later on the evening news their vocal cords cannot vibrate so what the listener hears instead is the air quivering pushing in pushing out a wall of silence this is the voice of terror in a vacuum.

  • • •

  For days I have felt a leopard crouching on my chest. I breathe in the stale air it exhales. It scratches at the inside of my chin and it kisses my neck. When it shifts its weight, my own ribs move.

  “She’s coming to”, I hear, the first words in a long time.

  I open my eyes and see in this order: my mother, my father, and the tiny attic room of the Big House. I squeeze my eyes shut. Something isn’t right: I have been expecting the house in San Diego. I have forgotten entirely about Massachusetts.

  I try to sit up but the leopard screams and claws at me.

  “What’s the matter with her?” my father is saying. “Help her, Jane. What’s the matter.” My mother presses cold towels against my forehead but does not notice this monster at